- 5 months ago
A vehicle plows down a 75-year-old military veteran on a country road in an apparent hit-and-run. However, when a young man confesses to the heinous crime, detectives quickly learn they've encountered a psychopath with an intense desire to thrill kill.
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00:009-1-1, what's the address of the emergency?
00:19I'm on the road to Irapica from US-19, and there's a dead body on the side of the road.
00:27I was driving down the road, and I seen a body, and I turned around because sometimes
00:38deers look like bodies.
00:479-1-1, what is the address of the emergency?
00:50I'm down by Old Dixie behind Sea Pines.
00:53I just killed someone.
00:55How did that happen?
00:57I just hit him.
00:59Hit him with what?
01:01My car.
01:02What was his name?
01:04I don't know his name.
01:06I don't know what's wrong with me, sir.
01:10What's wrong with me?
01:11I don't know what's wrong with me, but I don't know what's wrong with me.
01:23I don't know what's wrong with me.
01:24The thing inside of me, it's like, the appetite.
01:28Take a look that's going younger.
01:34Okay, I'm going to need you to either wait there
01:55or go back to the scene for the deputies.
01:59I'm by my car right now.
02:01Was he walking down the road?
02:03Did you just accidentally hit him, or what happened?
02:05No, I intentionally hit him.
02:07Is it wrong not to feel anything, just shock?
02:13It's not a typical 911 call.
02:16I think there are definitely times when the individual is experiencing what I would call
02:21transitory guilt.
02:23He even describes feeling shock, but it makes it transitory because it doesn't last very
02:28long.
02:29This statement about not feeling anything is preceded with, what's wrong with me?
02:33Right?
02:33Is it wrong?
02:35And the reality is, is that he is totally and completely self-aware that the impulse that
02:40he just had to run this person down was totally and completely wrong.
02:46The compulsion was such that he needed to do it.
02:49Yeah.
02:50The guy called and said he hit him on purpose.
02:51You hear that?
02:52Okay.
02:53Yeah.
02:54That's why he's on the old Dixie.
02:55He called saying he hit him.
02:56You're directly across from him?
02:58Yes, sir.
02:59Are you in the woods or where are you?
03:00I'm in the woods, but I'm in a little bit of a clearing.
03:01Right here.
03:02I called him over.
03:03I called him over.
03:04I called him over.
03:05I called him over.
03:06I called him over.
03:07What was that?
03:08I called him over.
03:09I called him over.
03:10What was that?
03:11I couldn't hear you.
03:20You're in the woods?
03:21I'm in a little bit of a clearing.
03:22Yeah?
03:23I don't know.
03:24I think they have a little bit of a clearing.
03:25Right here.
03:27I called him over.
03:36What's that?
03:37I couldn't hear him.
03:38Something get off my mind.
03:39How was your day?
03:40How was my day?
03:41It was good.
03:42My day was perfect, bro.
03:43What would be your advice for my parents?
03:46What do you mean?
03:47PH10.
03:48I want to ask you if I can call my mother.
03:50I know how she gets.
03:52I wouldn't call anybody right now.
03:53Honestly, bro, you don't even have to call anybody
03:55because you're over 18.
03:57I know that.
03:58No, which I totally understand.
03:59I totally understand.
04:01Let's just wait for a little bit
04:03and wait for the detectives to get here
04:05and then they can say, hey, you can call your mom,
04:07not call your mom, whatever.
04:10I think I'm just not telling her about this piece.
04:14That's just very problem.
04:19He's sort of downplaying the whole situation.
04:21He's asking police, you know,
04:23what do you think I can tell my mom?
04:25Again, sort of like he is friends with them
04:28and they're going to help him sort of circumvent
04:30the whole situation here.
04:31He's minimizing because he's out of tune
04:34with what's actually going on,
04:35which is a key feature of psychopathy.
04:37They don't register empathy or emotions
04:40and that coupled with a lack of moral compass
04:43allows them to not display remorse for what they did
04:46and kill and engage in violent acts.
04:55There.
04:56We came here because we wanted to see if,
04:59check you out and make sure you're okay.
05:01We wanted to see if you could answer a couple questions.
05:03Would that be okay?
05:04Of course. Okay.
05:05Let's go back over here and we'll have a little chat, okay?
05:08Do you work, Justin?
05:15Okay.
05:18And were you in route to somewhere specific today?
05:23No.
05:24You were just driving to drive?
05:26After I left, I don't know my thoughts.
05:29I just felt really angry.
05:32It really seems like Pinnell experienced a narcissistic wound here.
05:38He lost his job.
05:40So it seems like he experiences anger from this
05:44and he doesn't really know what to do with it.
05:46When a psychopath experiences a narcissistic wound,
05:49it essentially bounces off them
05:51and they will put it towards someone else.
05:54Whereas more of a neurotypical person,
05:56when we experience a narcissistic wound,
05:58we feel it deep inside and it causes sadness,
06:02perhaps some anger, but it's often directed inward.
06:05Whereas a psychopath is going to direct it mostly outward
06:09on other people and they're going to direct their anger
06:11to whoever's around them.
06:13I just couldn't think of anything.
06:16It kept...
06:17It's like...
06:19I don't want to say I'm hearing voices.
06:21It's just...
06:24It just kept sounding like I should kill someone.
06:26I should kill someone.
06:27Maybe it might make me feel better.
06:29Maybe it might make me happier.
06:32And so recently I've been driving around these roads
06:36that I know that people occasionally walk on
06:38and looking for people I could hit while avoiding witnesses.
06:48I don't know why I want to do this.
06:50I just...
06:51I also just wanted to calm down.
06:53I was just having some mental issues.
06:55I didn't end up going to work.
06:56Later throughout the day, I ended up getting a call from my...
06:59Oh, I believe my manager.
07:02Mm-hmm.
07:03And he told me to call my boss.
07:06I was having a bit of a...
07:09What feels like an anxiety attack to me sometimes.
07:12Mm-hmm.
07:13I would say anxiety attack.
07:14I just...
07:15I just was feeling stressed.
07:16And then he told me to meet him in the office,
07:18met him in the office.
07:20He told me I was fired and gave him my two checks
07:22from last week and wherever I worked for this week,
07:25which was, I believe, nine hours.
07:28So I drove around.
07:30And then I decided to sit here for a bit.
07:33Um...
07:34Just eating.
07:36I wasn't really waiting for anyone.
07:37I was just eating because I was hungry.
07:39Yeah, where you see the car got...
07:41into the accident, but, um...
07:43It wasn't...
07:45Anyways...
07:46I was just parked here just eating,
07:48watching some YouTube videos,
07:50and I started to drive again and look for someone to hit.
07:52Mm-hmm.
07:53I ended up going down Air Pika.
07:54That's when I saw the old guy with the cane.
07:56And then I made a U-turn.
07:58He was going into the grass.
08:00He was trying to avoid me because he saw me going for him,
08:02but I just went for him.
08:06He says he feels stressed.
08:07He says that he's potentially experiencing an anxiety attack.
08:11It's another element where I think it's important
08:13for people to understand that a psychopath feels emotions.
08:16They just don't feel emotions the way that other people typically do.
08:21What I think it is is that he's prone to boredom.
08:25What I think it is is that he has a need for stimulation.
08:29And the feelings that he gets about taking someone's life,
08:35potentially making him happier.
08:37Okay.
08:38So you were approaching him,
08:40and he was approaching you.
08:42And you swerved over.
08:46Yeah.
08:47Hit him.
08:48And I can see he must have hit your passenger side.
08:52And did you at all hit your brakes, or you just kept going,
08:57or did you accelerate?
08:59I was accelerating to hit him, and then when I hit him,
09:01I was trying to brake, but when I realized the brakes were broken,
09:03I just tried my best to try to find something I could crash into
09:06to try to stop the car.
09:07Did you hear him say anything?
09:09I only saw his reaction.
09:13What was that?
09:14You know, that oh s*** moment?
09:18What were your thoughts like when that were right at that moment?
09:22Do you remember?
09:24I just smiled and laughed.
09:28He enjoys the harm that he is inflicting,
09:35which is certainly an element of sadism.
09:38And I think he didn't recognize how much he was going to enjoy it,
09:42which is why he smiled and laughed,
09:44even though he could recognize that Pratt was dying.
09:47So there's certainly an element where even though he is not engaging
09:53in a prolonged sense of torture of Pratt,
09:56he would have if he could, but the pull prevented that prolonging.
10:02How fast do you think you were going when you struck him?
10:09Maybe 50, possibly even 70.
10:13And you had mentioned that you had thoughts of doing this.
10:18You wanted to do this.
10:20It's really just for curiosity.
10:23Okay.
10:24But I figured if it was curiosity,
10:27it would probably relieve the stress once I figured it out,
10:29how it would feel.
10:31Is this the only way you imagined doing it,
10:34or had you imagined doing it in other methods?
10:37Like some other way?
10:39I mean, I'm really fond with knives.
10:43I was thinking about slicing people up and cutting them open,
10:48dissecting them essentially.
10:50Yeah.
10:51But you've never done that before?
10:53No.
10:54He's not entirely sophisticated
10:56on how he's going to act out his fantasy.
10:59He talked about wanting to dissect people,
11:02his fascination with knives, but he didn't do that here.
11:05He used his car, sort of like he's a little detached from the person.
11:08It's not up close and personal,
11:10and that's because I don't think he was ready yet.
11:12I think this was sort of his first go at killing somebody.
11:16Okay.
11:17So our forensic techs are here.
11:19What we'll do is we'll step out real quick.
11:22We'll let them take some pictures of you.
11:24I'm going to call my supervisor and update them on what's going on,
11:26and then we'll go from there, okay?
11:28I don't mean to smile and laugh in this situation.
11:30I'm just trying to not think about it.
11:33When you were thinking about, like,
11:36maybe possibly hitting somebody,
11:38did you think at all to your self-thought process with that?
11:42Finish them off.
11:43Okay.
11:44Like I said, I had an interest in wanting to dissect people.
11:48Well, let's just say I answered one question I was wanting to answer,
11:52which was what I felt like to kill someone.
12:04How does it feel?
12:06I mean, when I did it, I was laughing.
12:11I mean, I enjoyed it, but afterwards, after I calmed down a bit,
12:18I wouldn't say I felt regretful.
12:21I mean, to be perfectly honest, I was more ashamed that I broke the car the way I did
12:27when I killed a person.
12:28Mm-hmm.
12:29Like, I was shocked the fact that I was thinking about hitting bicyclists
12:33because the fact that I see them more often than walkers.
12:36But then I figured, oh, no, then my car's going to get damaged,
12:39and I can't really cover that up.
12:40More damage with a bicycle, you mean?
12:42Yeah.
12:43Yeah.
12:44Well, I thought the bicycle was going to cost more damage
12:45than me hitting the person.
12:47And when I ended up hitting the individual,
12:49I didn't expect that kind of damage.
12:51Is he placing more value on the car rather than on a human life?
12:54Yes, he is, but he's doing it for a very specific reason.
12:57He's doing it because both things are objects that can be disposed of.
13:02But the car is his object,
13:05one that he would choose not to dispose of if he didn't have to.
13:10He cares more about what's his and cares less about what isn't his.
13:16In either scenario, it's still just an object.
13:20You ever, like, pulled it or watched videos on it to see what it's like
13:23or anything like that?
13:25I just, just like looking at the dead bodies.
13:28I tend to get a little hungry when I see a dead body.
13:31Not that I want to eat it.
13:33I just never could explain that.
13:36I just see a dead body and I get hungry and that's it.
13:39Hungry, like?
13:40Which oddly enough, I eat food and then feel like I want to keep,
13:43I want to hit something, I want to kill something.
13:45We see Pinnell talking to officers about how he gets hungry
13:49when he thinks about killing.
13:51He's describing this behavioral concept called conditioning.
13:54So when you're doing two different things at once,
13:56like two stimuli are paired together,
13:58then you get a conditioned response.
14:00So when he tells the officers that he sort of has this hunger
14:04and feels like he wants something to eat,
14:06it's probably because he usually does eat while he's watching
14:11these horrific videos and thinking about killing.
14:14What do you think your mom and your dad are going to say
14:16when we talk to them?
14:17Or if we end up talking to them?
14:19Do you think, like, you're going to have to tell them, obviously,
14:21that you damaged your car.
14:23So, like, what do you think?
14:25I hit the deer.
14:26No.
14:27I wish that was the case.
14:29At least in this way, it's like, oh, that's no big deal.
14:31He hit a deer.
14:32Yeah.
14:33It's kind of funny how people brush a killing of an animal off
14:37more easily than they do of a human.
14:39Unless you go to, like, something like, say, a PETA
14:41and you murder a cat from him,
14:42oh, then you're going to raise all kinds of hell.
14:45But aside from that,
14:48any normal person would easily shrug off an animal's death
14:51versus a human death, which ironically enough,
14:54humans are technically animals.
14:56I think here he is being a little bit more theatrical.
14:59He's expanding on his fantasy, really,
15:02that he's had for this long time, and I think he's doing that
15:05because he wants to get that rise possibly out of officers,
15:09and also it gives him excitement himself.
15:12So you can hear at that point that he does not have any regard
15:16for human life, pretty typical of psychopath,
15:19and he wants to just compare brushing off a human life
15:23just as easily as he brushes off an animal life.
15:26Have you ever told anybody about your thoughts with this kind of stuff,
15:29about wanting to kind of do this out of curiosity,
15:32hit somebody or use a knife or anything?
15:35I did try to talk about it with some of my own families,
15:40or, yeah, not my families, my parents.
15:43I happen to have them, well, I have them all the time,
15:46but they're mainly directed towards, well, my boys and my school,
15:52well, during my school years, specifically in middle school.
15:55That was the worst of it, at least.
15:57I'm grateful that it wasn't the worst.
16:00Is there any questions you have of us or anything
16:03that we didn't discuss with you about, you know, today
16:06or anything that you think is important for us to know
16:08or you want to talk about?
16:10I mean, I was really nervous of talking with you guys
16:12about my, well, school life because that typically
16:15is a bit of a sensitive area for me.
16:18Sorry.
16:19I mean, I have a lot of stories to share about it,
16:21but if it only, if it has to pertain to the crime,
16:23then I'd rather just do that.
16:25It makes a lot of sense in a way that he would have
16:28a lot easier time talking about the murder
16:32because that is something that he wanted to do.
16:35That's a choice that he made.
16:37That's something that he laughed and thought was kind of fun.
16:40Whereas talking about even the grades he got in school
16:43was making him very angry and upset and dejected.
16:48And it doesn't make sense to a neurotypical person
16:52why that would happen.
16:53But to him and the way that he's thinking about it,
16:55I think it made all the sense in the world.
16:57Were you hitting this person to hurt them
16:59or were you hitting them to kill them?
17:01Intention to kill me.
17:02I don't really want someone to suffer.
17:04I mean, I don't know about you,
17:06but if I had the choice of suffering before I die
17:09or just dying, I'd pick the dying route.
17:12Yeah.
17:13Like I'd rather have you just probably even just slit my throat
17:16because that would be the closest thing I think of torturing someone.
17:20I don't believe in the fact of torturing the victim.
17:32If I killed him, at least this way he didn't die suffering.
17:36Because how I see it is, if I'm going to die,
17:38I'd rather have someone just outright kill me,
17:40not just make it suffering.
17:43I mean, it's one thing to struggle,
17:44in which case you're making yourself suffer,
17:46but different story if you're like,
17:48okay, I accept it.
17:50Kill me now.
17:51I mean, of course I'm not saying that that justifies murder.
17:54Because Pennell doesn't view torture psychologically.
17:59He views it as physical.
18:02He doesn't view the fact that the,
18:05when he's going 50 to 70 miles an hour,
18:08that Pratt sees his impending death.
18:12When he crashes through the windshield
18:14and Pennell can see his face,
18:17and Pennell is laughing at him,
18:20he doesn't see that as torture
18:22because he doesn't view torture that way.
18:25For him, all of this stuff
18:27was just a quick end to Pratt.
18:32When the reality is,
18:33is that Pratt suffered, suffered a lot.
18:36And Pennell doesn't care.
18:52Did he ever make any, like, statements
18:53that he wanted to harm himself or others?
18:55Never himself.
18:57He has said, like, he would just be,
18:59he's curious, but never, like,
19:01follow through or anything like that.
19:03Curious about what?
19:04Curious, like, what it would be like
19:05to kill somebody.
19:07He said that to you before?
19:08Yeah, but he said it on and off
19:09throughout growing up.
19:10You know what I'm saying?
19:11And he's never...
19:12That's kind of, do you think that's
19:13kind of like a bizarre thing?
19:15Well, then, yeah.
19:16Well, just recently, I was like,
19:17well, should we look into getting
19:18you help or anything?
19:19When he was, like, 13,
19:20because he threatened,
19:21he said he felt like killing
19:22the whole entire family
19:23and just running away.
19:24Was he interested in, like,
19:25true crime stuff as well?
19:26No, he doesn't really get into it
19:28with me or anything.
19:29Okay.
19:30He'll just talk about it
19:31or how they died and stuff like that.
19:32He doesn't process things normal.
19:34Okay.
19:35Like, I don't, like,
19:36how mean you have compassion
19:37for other people or things?
19:39He doesn't add that.
19:40Pinnell's mother really highlights
19:43that this hasn't been just
19:45a recent problem.
19:46This wasn't necessarily
19:48an impulsive act on this day.
19:50Like, this is a long-standing problem
19:52that Pinnell's had since he was 13 years old
19:55or even before.
19:56And they were a problem back then
19:58and probably only got worse over time.
20:05Justin Pinnell was sentenced
20:06to life in prison without parole
20:07for intentionally running over
20:09a 75-year-old Vietnam War veteran.
20:12The victim, Michael Pratt,
20:13was walking along Arapika Road
20:15in January of 2020
20:16when he was hit.
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